Principal's Newsletter, week 8, term 4, 2014

posted Nov 28, 2014, 12:24 AM by Ms. Connors

Next
week on Tuesday night at 7pm we will hold our inaugural End of Year Concert at the Chatswood Concourse; a spectacular
performance venue. We are very excited to showcase the wonderful talent of all
our students. A number of our fabulous year 12 students are coming back to join
us, they are very excited to play at such a wonderful venue and also commented
that “this might be my only chance to play on a Steinway”. Our string and band
ensembles have truly flourished as the year progressed. Please come along and
join all us in this wonderful celebration. The Chatswood Concourse is located
at 409 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood. Parking is also available.

We received the
fantastic news that one of our Year 12
Visual Arts students Kathy Xu has had her work selected for Art Express
2014. Kathy’s work titled “Weapons of Mass Reproduction”. It is an amazing
honour for Kathy’s work to be selected and we congratulate Kathy and Ian
Goggin, her extremely talented Visual Art teacher.

The Year 12 Formal was a huge success in
the beautiful location of Jones Bay Wharf. Our students looked spectacular in
gorgeous gowns and stunning suits. The whole group radiated happiness, joy and
friendship. It was a wonderful celebration. Once again I would like to thank Mr
Neil Pakes and Mrs Kaarin McKenzie who were our Year 12 year advisors and have
worked tirelessly to ensure their students were supported throughout the year.

Thank you to Ms
Novotni and Mr Wilson for organising and implementing the Year 10 camp. The year 10 peer support camp is a very important
component of our wellbeing curriculum and teaches students the very important
resilience skills they will need for their senior years and beyond. Recognising
and developing their support networks – parents, families, friends and teachers
– is important in building a positive environment to live and work in. The camp
also provides a wonderful opportunity to meet and get to know our new students
who will come to us in year 11. Thank you to Ms Zhu, Mr Driscoll, Mr Wilson, Ms
Boatswain, Ms Walker, Mr Ng, Ms Webb, Mr Twomey, Ms Kong, Mr Gerlach, Ms
Burgess and Mr Long for ensuring this camp was a success.

Building Projects – We met with Public Works this week to
finalise plans for our science lab refurbishment. I realise this is taking
longer than we would like but we are confident that we will gain a superb
product and getting the details correct now are essential. The refurbishment
will need to be in two stages; C1.2 and C1.2 will begin early in Term 1 and
C0.1 will follow. This allows us to continue to use some labs during the
process. No news to report on the gym – but it will happen; we are approved and
just have to be patient. We continue to work to improve the playground seating
for students. We have installed the fabulous stands that were given to us by
the parents of the Class of 2013 and we have also added single benches
throughout the school.

Next Wednesday we
hold our Year 7 2015 Orientation Day
and also hold our Indian and Sri Lankan
Food Day. Showcasing our wonderful parents and the work they contribute to
help our school in so many ways makes this a very special day. I will attach a
menu for the day – please encourage your children to take advantage of our
extended recess and buy lots of fantastic food.